-fl 298 
.04 
1898 
Jopy 1 




^ STUDY OF 

SOME OF OUR SCHOOL 

PROBLEMS AND 

STATE OF LOCAL INTEREST 

IN THE LOCAL SCHOOL 



BY THE STATE 
SUPERINTENDENT OF 
PUBLIC SCHOOLS 
OF MAINE. 



AUGUSTA 
1S98. 






The Educational Department is prepared to send copies of this 
document free of charge on application. 

W. W. STETSON, 

State Superintendent of Public Schools. 
Augusta, Maine. 



St 0.ofD. 




SOME OF OUR SCHOOL PROBLEMS. 

The following questions are being asked those who are responsible 
for the administration of the public schools at the present time : First, 
what are the schools doing for children between the ages of 5 and 13 
years, and second, are the children who are leaving the public schools 
to-day as well fitted to go out into the world or to go on with their 
studies as they were fifty years ago. A study of local conditions and 
statistics will make the most positive somewhat cautious in giving 
replies which would indicate that our work and its results are above 
criticism. 

SCHOOL ATTENDANCE. 

There are in the State 210,000 persons between the ages of 4 and 21 
years. The average attendance in the public schools during the past 
yeai was 96,000. There are 1,000 more children in the State between 
5 and 14 years of age than there are pupils enrolled in the common 
schools. The number of children between 5 and 14 exceeds the average 
attendance by 37,000. These figures make it clear that our compulsory 
laws are not enforced, and that a large number of our young people 
are growing up with no training in the schools, or training of such a 
limited character as to make it impossible for them to be fitted for 
citizenship. 

The increase in illliteracy in New England has been so rapid within 
the last two decades that persons who have been studying this matter 
have become somewhat alarmed. An attempt has been made to explain 
this deterioration by the fact that we have had a large increase in our 
foreign population. Two answers might be made to this explanation : 
First, we should be somewhat concerned about increasing our ignorant 
population more rapidly than we are furnishing training for our peo- 
ple ; and second, that these states have a larger native born illiterate 
population at the present time than at any previous date in their history. 

The necessity for a study of certain conditions found in the State by 
a body of experts admits of no question. This Board of Inquiry should 
collect the facts and suggest remedies for the evils discovered. That 
there has been an increase in illiteracy, insanity and crime is known 
to all persons who are familiar with national statistics. Why these 
changes have come, how these evils can be abated, and what must be 
done to place us in a position to retrieve lost ground and grow into 
better estates concern every well wisher of Maine. It is useless to deny 
the facts. It is criminal to shut our eyes to the truth. It is worse 
than a mistake not to attempt to make the bad good and the good better. 



That our children are not attending school regularly, or for the 
length of time they should, is known to even the most casual observer 
of these matters. These questions have their financial as well as their 
moral and educational sides. If Maine is to win the prosperity which 
is within her reach, the farmers and business and professional men of 
the State must give to the study of these questions that attention which 
will insure not only a mastery of the facts, but a solution of the prob- 
lems they present. Those things must be done which will insure the 
regular and continuous attendance of the children of the State in the 
public schools for such periods as will enable them to master the ele- 
ments of an English education, and develop within them the po 
necessary in carrying on the work of life and discharging the duties 
of responsible citizens. 

SUBJECTS OF STUDY. 

We are trying to do too many things. We are not doing anything 
thoroughly. We are studying too many subjects. We are not master- 
ing any of them. We have too many centres or units of study. It is 
not possible for a child to divide his attention among a dozen different 
subjects each day without being injured. Our children are suffering 
from the effects of doing a little of everything, and doing nothing well. 
They have become dissipated by dissipating their energies over too 
large a held. They have been everything by turns and nothing 
They have haa a little of this, less of something else, and they have 
not acquired much that will be helpful to them in after year.-. 

The scope and purpose of the common schools have either been 
forgotten, or are not properly conceived. It is the duty of school 
officials and teachers to realize that the first work of the public sch 
to train the child to see, to accumulate, to think. In developing these 
powers he must be so trained that he can read, cipher, write. When 
these things are well done the child is better prepared for life than a 
large proportion of the children who leave our schools. We must have 
more drill, more mastery, more definite knowledge of what we study. 
These conditions can never obtain generally until the vagueness which 
surrounds the work of the schools has been replaced by definite aims, 
thorough work and intelligent instruction. Children must have the 
opportunity and training which will give them poise, skill, strength. 
They will get these in schools where they have an opportunity to settle 
down to the deliberate, continuous and close study of a few subjects, 
and follow these out in their tributary lines, and in these tributary 
the training necessary to breadth and vision. We are coming to see 
that involved abstractions belong to maturer years; that it is possible 
to imbecile children by anaesthetizing them with facts and idea- beyond 
their powers of comprehension, and beyond their capacity to hold in 
solution. We shall make a departure worthy of the age when we act 
on the decision that there are some subjects that should not be included 
in the course of study for common schools, and that the college and 
university still have a field of labor and an excuse for being. We are suf- 
fering from the evil effects of too many studies, too great elaborat : 



details, and too intricate and difficult investigations. In a word, the 
children need less theoretic philosophy, and more practical activity. 

We have not placed a proper estimate on the value of quiet, serenity, 
steadiness, and have not duly appreciated the evils arising from irrita- 
tion, excitement, restlessness. We are beginning to feel the need of 
repose, meditation, thoughtfulness. It is dawning upon us that we are 
giving so much instruction that the children are becoming incapable of 
learning. Teachers and parents are beginning to see that so much 
work has been done for the children that they are losing the desire 
and ability to labor. 

READING. 

We spend nine years in striving to teach the children in the public 
schools to read. The success attained is not encouraging to the child 
or flattering to the teacher. Competent judges have stated that the 
average child, when he has completed what is known as the common 
school studies, cannot pronounce words correctly, does not know their 
meaning, cannot extract the pith from the sentences and paragraphs 
read, does not read in such a way as to be understood by the listener, 
and in no sense is able to master the printed page. It is hardly neces- 
sary to say that such things ought not to be true of a student who has 
been instructed regularly in any given subject for the school days of 
nine years. If they are true it is because pupils fail to do what is set 
before them, and teachers fail to direct them in their work in such 
a way as to enable them to get the greatest benefit from their labors. 

A child should be so taught that he knows and can reproduce the 
sounds represented in the words he is required to pronounce. He should 
receive such training in phonics as will make it possible for him to do 
this work promptly and correctly. The drill should be begun so early 
and continued so persistently that the execution of it in the end will 
be semi-autqmatic. He must know the meaning, force and impressiveness 
of words. He must make such a study of them as will permit him 
to know their shadings and qualities. They are tools with which he 
must be so familiar that in using them he will exhibit his skill and intelli- 
gence rather than his awkwardness and ignorance. No training is effi- 
cient wnich leaves the child in doubt as to the value of a word, its 
place in the sentence and the relation to other words which will give 
it its greatest potency. He must make such a study of the sentence, 
paragraph and complete selection as will enable him to catch the drift, 
absorb the spirit, drink in the sentiment, and understand the ideas 
expressed. 

The reproducing of sounds, the calling of words, the mouthing of sen- 
tences, is not reading. Good reading is dependent upon a knowledge of 
symbols, an understanding of words, a comprehension of sentences. 
This knowledge, understanding and comprehension can only be acquired 
by intelligent drill, persistently repeated. So much for the mechanics 
of reading. 

Much as we have gone astray in our methods, our sins in the use of 
reading matter have even exceeded those of instruction. Too much of the 



material placed in the hands of the child is of that quality which makes 
the lesson a discouraging exercise to the teacher and a tiresome recita- 
tion to the pupil. It is wanting in sense, sentiment, sound. It is namby- 
pamby in the cheapest sense, silly in every sense, and wearisome beyond 
expression. It pictures forth no scene. It portrays no person. It 
makes record of no act or emotion. The reading lesson should not 
only train, develop, but should attune the child. It should stir his 
emotions, school his feelings, fire his ambition-, and set him in motion 
by the power of its eloquence and the fervor of its pleading. To do 
this the matter read must have been written by a master. We must 
read the speeches of Webster, Lincoln and Henry : the poems of Shake- 
speare, Milton, Thompson, Pope; and those single radiant gems. The 
Battle Hymn of the Republic. Elegy in a Country Churchyard, Thana- 
topsis, Battle of Waterloo from Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. Knot's 
Mortality, Rienzi's Address, Regulus to the Roman Senate, The Rill 
from the Town Pump, and Ye Crags and Peaks. Tnese anu a host 
of others furnish suitable material for the daily reading lesson. They 
are all of that class of literature of which children and adults never 
tire. The second or the hundredth reading brings out new beauty, 
stimulates new thought, stirs new emotions, impresses and moulds in 
new ways. These selections should be read, studied, recited. The 
words should be studied as to their form, meaning, peculiar force, 
place in the sentence. The sentences should be studied in reference to 
their arrangement of words, style and thought expressed. The selection 
should be studied as to its central idea, the illustrations, portrayals, 
and other means used to express the same, and the gems of thought or 
expression it contains. But above all and more than all, the child should 
read, re-read and read again the selection studied. He should read it 
until it becomes a part of his thought, feeling, life ; until he has so 
thoroughly absorbed it that he is saturated with it throughout. 

One cannot learn to read without having read the best that has been 
written. One cannot learn to read without reading the best many times. 
Whatever of history, geography, nature, one can master while studying 
his reading lesson is well and good. But before all, and after all. the 
great purpose of the reading lesson is a mastery of the printed page. If 
the child fail in tnis his work has been in vain. If he succeed in this, 
he is in the way to get a liberal education. Without it, he is helple--. 
With it, he can conquer all things. Incidentally, not a little knowledge 
may be acquired, many tributary lines may be worked out; but first 
and foremost, and always, the purpose of the reading lesson should 
be to know words, comprehend sentences, and master conceptions. The 
great thing in teaching reading is to read. Therefore, read. read. read. 

ARITHMETIC. 

We spend nine years striving to teach the children in the public 
schools to cipher. The success attained is not encouraging to the child 
or flattering to the teacher. He can recognize the symbols used in repre- 
senting numbers, but he does not know their value, and cannot use them 



skillfully. He can recite definitions and repeat rules, but in many cases 
if the order of the words were reversed the sentences would mean quite 
as much to him as they do in their regular form. He can tell you some 
things about cube root that are not so, but he finds it difficult to write 
numbers, and still more difficult to add columns of figures — correctly. 
The fundamental principles, the essential truths, the primary facts of 
arithmetic are unknown and apparently unknowable to him. Of the 
science of arithmetic he seems to know nothing. As an art, he is quite 
as much at sea as though there was no such thing as an arithmetical 
compass. 

He commences his work in arithmetic at a time when he should be 
observing, reading. The study of things to him incomprehensible stupefies, 
benumbs him. It seems impossible for him to comprehend the truth 
stated, the principle enunciated, or the illustration given. He turns a 
crank, and if he turns it the right way, the correct result is forthcoming. 
If he turns it the wrong way, he knows it is wrong because it does not 
produce the answer given in the book. His study of arithmetic is 
mechanical, useless. He puts into it no life, zest, enthusiasm. He gets 
from it no knowledge, no training, and no enlarged capacity. If he 
had commenced his work in this subject when his mental development 
fitted him to understand it, his progress would have been rapid, his 
understanding intelligent, and his mastery complete. He would be able 
to know what is true, why it is true, ana how to prove it is true. Facts, 
principles, problems, would have been things which he could understand, 
use. 

The study and mastery of arithmetic develops the reason, and trains 
the thinking powers. It enables one to perform computations rapidly 
and accurately. It enables him to find out how much wood there is in 
a given pile, how many square feet in a given area, and perform the 
computations and solve the problems that come into his boyhood experi- 
ence and manhood work. 

It is possible that a person may have an opportunity to make use 
of the work which he does in ratio and proportion, allegation, per- 
mutations, progressions, equation of payments, foreign exchange, the 
extraction of roots, and finding the areas and solid contents of frustrums 
of pyramids ; but the probabilities are so small that this information will 
be used that it is clearly better for the average child to devote most 
of the time given to arithmetic to other and more important subjects. 

It is better for the child to acquire his first knowledge of number 
indirectly and semi-unconsciously. When he has attained to such 
maturity that the study of arithmetic can be pursued profitably, then he 
should devote the most of his time to a thorough mastery of the four 
fundamental rules, common and decimal fractions, the applications of 
% denominate numbers that come within the range of his experience, and the 
simple applications of percentage. A consideration of the remaining 
subjects usually found in our arithmetics and enumerated above would 
better be deferred indefinitely. 

A mastery of arithmetic enables one to apply understandingly the 
principles studied, and perform the necessary operations with speed and 



accuracy. The combinations in the four fundamental rules should be 
given as rapidly as the child can read lines of print of equal length. The 
measuring of distances, the finding of areas, the computing of the solid 
contents of things within the range of his daily observation should be 
so thoroughly mastered that the student may perform the necessary 
operations without special thought of the principles involved. He 
should be able to use fractions as easily, understanding^ and accurately 
as he combines whole numbers. The handling of per cents should be so 
well understood as to enable him to see that it is simply a variation of 
the decimal system upon whicn our notation is based, and the terms used 
should be a part of his every day vocabulary. 

To summarize: This study should be deferred until children are 
old enough to understand the principles involved. The most of the time 
and drill should be given to those principles and problems which are 
the foundation of the science, and are most used in daily experi- 
ence. The instruction under each principle should be supplemented, 
and the drill should be continued until the student has a complete mas- 
tery of the work in hand. Anything less than this is poor teaching, 
and sends the student out of school in a crippled condition. Not less 
than one-third of the time devoted to this branch should be given to 
mental arithmetic. 

GEOGRAPHY. 

We spend five years in striving to teach the children in the public 
schools a usable knowledge of geography. The success attained is not 
encouraging to the child or flattering to the teacher. We are not satis- 
fied with pursuing a course in reading and arithmetic productive of 
results of which we are all ashamed, but we are adding to the reasons 
for criticising our work and are injuring our pupils by attempting things 
in this branch that are beyond the capacities of the children instructed. 
Instead of commencing the work in geography by teaching the child to 
observe the physical phenomena in his immediate vicinity, we spend 
considerable time in befogging him with statements about distances, 
dimensions, circles, lines, revolutions, orbits and that mass of material 
which comes under the general heads of mathematical and astronomical 
geography, and would better find a place in the high school or even 
college course. Most of this matter is so briefly and imperfectly stated 
that it must be supplemented by knowledge derived from other sources 
to be understood by any one. It is not within the comprehension of 
children attending common schools even if put in its simplest form. 

We also waste much valuable time in locating unimportant towns 
and insignificant rivers, lakes, bay-, and other natural divisions. Not 
content with this, we devote a large portion of the course to a study 
of Africa. Asia, and the islands of the sea. While a general knowledge 
of the location of the larger divisions is necessary to an intelligent read- 
ing of current literature, yet a detailed study of these areas is unprofit- 
able, except to specialists. The child can best learn about the world in 
which he lives by studying the schoolroom in which he is domiciled, the 
schoolyard in which he plays, the town in which he lives, the county in 



which his town 'is located, the State and Nation of which he is a citizen. 
If he knows the objects and their location in his own schoolroom, 
schoolyard and town, the physical phenomena within the range of his 
own travels and observations in such a way as to understand what they 
are, and what they represent, ne has seen in miniature the most of what 
the world contains. By studying these and using his imagination, he 
can come to know objects beyond the range of his vision. Geography is 
partly an observation and more largely an imagination study, and should 
be so treated. 

It is to be hoped that the day will soon come when we shall cease 
to commit to memory in a -blind, stupefying, senseless way, the definitions 
or descriptions found in the first pages of most geographies ; that we 
shall cease to give the locations of unimportant places, and that we 
shall not much longer learn so many things that are not so about people 
in the ends of the earth, and that instead, we shall come to have a familiar 
and helpful acquaintance with the objects within the range of our own 
investigation and inspection. When this method of teaching geography 
shall prevail, then children will not think it is five hundred miles from 
Auburn to Portland, and fifty miles from Auburn to San Francisco. 
They will have some sensible idea of direction, distance, size, flora, fauna, 
industries, commerce. From personal observation, they can discover 
why cities are located at certain points, given products are grown upon 
given areas, certain industries are carried on in certain localities, and 
the work of the world is done as it is. 

Give the children a chance to absorb their geographical knowledge 
by reading interesting and instructive books on this and kindred subjects. 
Let them see that the work of the school is connected with the work of 
the world; that school study helps in home study; that they must read 
all their days, if they are to be educated, i^orm and fix the habit of read- 
ing. Count no effort too great in accomplishing this result. 

LANGUAGE AND GRAMMAR. 

Something must be radically wrong when a child can attend school 
until he is 15 years of age, receiving instruction in language and gram- 
mar during every year of his school life, and yet go out into the world 
as ignorant of the simple forms of good English as if he never had 
seen the inside of a schoolhouse. 

The object of all study in language should be to enable the 
child to speak and write English correctly. Ever} T lesson should 
be a lesson in language. Constant attention to errors of expres- 
sion commonly heard in the schoolroom and on the playground 
may do much to correct in the rising generation the mistakes of 
the previous and less favored ones. Much depends on the enthusiasm of 
the teacher and her abilhy to inspire the pupils with a desire to use the 
best forms of speech. The committing to memory of definitions and 
rules, the analyzing of sentences, and the parsing of words will not, of 
themselves, enable one to speak the English language with accuracy and 
facility. One's knowledge of these things must be so thorough that he 
will be unconscious of what he knows, and unmindful that he is using 
formulas. 



The fact that not a few of the masterpieces of literature were written 
before grammars were in existence, and the further fact that many of 
the writers of classics had little or no knowledge of grammar, do not 
warrant us in assuming that this study will not be serviceable to the 
children of the present day. Our mistakes have consisted in thinking 
that we could become accomplished in the use of language by acquiring 
a familiarity with etymology, syntax and prosody, as taught in text- 
books. This method was doomed to failure from the start, and never 
can be made successful by even our uest instructors, and must prove 
more than a dismal failure in the hands of the average teacher. 

While text-uooks in this study are useful, and hence necessary, yet 
they must be supplemented by an intelligence and knowledge on the 
part of the teacher sufficient to enable her to supply their deficiencies, 
and use what is given in such a way as to assist the child in formu- 
lating the principles which have governed in the writing of the lan- 
guage he is studying. Until the pupil knows how to analyze words, 
selecting the root and giving its meaning, naming the prefixes and suffixes 
and telling in what they add to or abstract from the word, and knows the 
word in all its possibilities and uses, he has no basis for language study. 
When this work is done, he is prepared to study the sentence, the parts 
of which it is composed, the words which show the relation of the 
parts to each other and the form which gives it grace and strength. 

The studying of formal grammar must be preceded by the reading. 
studying, meditating upon specimens of classical English. When the 
child can recite from memory one of our English classics in such a 
way as to indicate that he lives in its atmosphere, has imbibed its spirit, 
appreciated its thought and is stirred by its emotion, then is he prepared 
to apply the rules governing its construction. The time has come ' 
when we must cease to spend days, weeks, months and years in the 
inane practice of listening to memoriter recitations on definitions, rules, 
exceptions; in a word, we cannot know our language, and we shall 
never be felicitous in its use until we have made companions of the 
great language artists. This done, the mastery of the principles upon 
which language is based, and which we must observe in our use of it. 
will be not only a pleasant task, but a comparatively easy one. 

HISTORY. 

According to a certain chronology American history commenced about 
six thousand years ago. It continues until after the Spanish war and 
the annexation of Hawaii. The attempt to study history by starting 
with the date 1492. is quite as foolish as attempting to make a journey 
by commencing at the middle point and walking both ways at the same 
time. The result in the one case would be the same as in the other. 

In the early days nations lived by themselves, each within a fairly 
well defined area, with an accepted mission. When each had worked 
out its destiny, it ceased to be an influential factor in the progre- 
the world. It seems to have been reserved for the United States to act 
in the capacity of a reservoir. To us have come not only representa- 



tives of all nations, civilizations, but also there have come to us the best 
and worse the world has developed in the ages that are passed. We. 
more largely than any people of the past, are cosmopolitan in instinct, 
tendencies, work. What progress has been made, what mistakes have 
been committed — the history of the world — must be somewhat familiar 
to us before we can study the record of our own growth. It is not 
possible to use successfully in our schools a text-book on universal 
history ; but the teacher must have such a knowledge of the march of 
events that incidentally she can place the facts before the children, and 
in process of time have them become reasonably familiar with the 
world's advancement. 

From the time the child commences. to attend school until he leaves 
the university, he should be brought in contact with the lives of the 
men and the women who have consciously or unconsciously given direc- 
tion, tone and impulse to the times in which they lived. If he knows 
them in their ancestors, boyhood, youth, manhood and old age. in 
their emotions, aspirations, struggles, disappointments, desertions, tri- 
umphs, he will know more history than if he could recite all the compen- 
diums that have yet been printed, numerous, bewildering and useless as 
they are. If he has learned what led to the crucial events that stand 
out in such clear perspective, in what they consisted, in what they 
resulted, and how they have blessed or cursed the world, he has been 
studying history to some purpose. If he can locate the historical monu- 
ments of the past, measure their foundations, scale their walls, appreciate 
their beauties, he knows something about the point from which we 
started, the pathway we have traveled, the vantage ground we have 
gained, the direction in which we are facing, the goal we are destined 
to reach. While this ma}^ seem to be a large outline for common 
schools, it is no larger than is demanded by the age in which we live. 
It is useless to attempt to erect a historical structure without a founda- 
tion. 

Our own great men, great events and monuments, can be best studied 
in the light of what has been. When so studied they reveal to the chil- 
dren where we started, how we have grown, what we have developed, 
mastered, attained. We must abandon the system of giving undue 
prominence to the study of dates, wars, incidents. We must know 
something about causes, progress, results. 

Most, if not all. of the above work must be done under the direction 
and guidance of the teacher. Not a little of it must be given to the 
children by the teacher. It is not possible for them to study these sub- 
jects in such a way as to get much out of their reading. It 
would be better for the child to commence his personal study of history by 
finding out when his town was organized, from what territory it was 
formed, ascertaining the facts in relation to its development and growth, 
and becoming familiar with the lives of the men and women who have 
been prominent and influential in its history. The same general course 
should then be pursued and extended in the study of the history of the 
State, and following it comes the study of the Nation. By this plan 
he proceeds from the things that are within his own observation, and to 



12 

an extent within his own knowledge, and arc susceptible of personal 
inspection and verification. With these as a basis he can go forward 
in his work, having solid ground upon which to stand, and suitable 
material out of which to construct his historical edi 

Have the children read the best books in history and biography. 
"Reading maketh a full man.'' 



While it is true that we have but a limited use for oral spelling in daily 
life, and while it is also true that most of the instruction in spelling 
at the present time is given in the form of written exercises, yet it 
is, nevertheless, true that a large proportion of the young people of the 
present time find it difficult to spell tne words they have to write. The 
old-fashioned spelling school not only had a mission but served an 
important purpose. It made people familiar with the words which com- 
posed the vocabularies of all classes. This familiarity in the end gave 
some facility in the use of words. After a time, the source from which 
words were derived, their meanings and force were studied, and hence 
people acquired a certain propriety and dignity in the use of langi 

It is true that we cannot use the machinery of a past age in doing 
the work of the present time. When a system is perfected it must go. 
It was a blessing while growing, but proves a curse to teachers and 
children when grown. It is safe to assume that we shall never per- 
manently revive the spelling school of former days. The task is upon 
us of devising some means by which we can do the work it did so 
efficiently. It is recommended that teachers make use of the oral spell- 
ing lesson for about one-half of the work in this study; that all written 
exercises be considered work in spelling, and that in the regular written 
lesson the student be required to write not only the word pronounced, 
but a sentence in which the word is used in such a way as to express 
some thought of value, or information of importance. 

PENMANSHIP. 

The penmanship of most children, and of many adults, is a torture to 
the person who executes it, and a source of bewilderment to those who 
attempt to read it. It is without form and comeliness, and in most 
cases it subtracts instead of adds to the information it i- supposed to 
convey. We spend years in teaching children that loop letters must be 
three spaces high, that t's and d's must be two spaces high, and that i's 
and m's and u's must be one space high. After teaching the oval and 
the capital stem, the right and left curves, and all the other intricacies 
and mysteries of modern penmanship, and insisting that the children shall 
sit in certain positions and hold their pens in particular ways, and 
devote a specific portion of each school day for a certain number of 
years to this work, we have children leaving our schools who are desti- 
tute of the ability to write in a legible, rapid hand. Years of practice 
seem to increase rather than diminish the extent of their -inning in this 
direction. 



13 

It is hoped that some of the vertical systems of penmanship being 
introduced into our schools at the present time will within a few years 
furnish such a basis for our work in this study as will enable us to so 
train our boys and girls that they can acquit themselves with a reasonable 
degree of credit in this branch. 

CONCLUSION. 

The sentence with which this section of the Report was opened is a 
fitting one with which to close : We must so administer our schools 
that the children will acquire the ability to read, cipher, write. The most 
and the best of the work done in geography, history, language and 
grammar will be done in connection with the work in reading. Some 
of the work in history and geography can be done in connection with the 
work in arithmetic. 

To repeat, we must have fewer centres or units of study. We must 
have definitely outlined in our minds what we are to do ; then we 
must set ourselves resolutely to its accomplishment. If we can group 
the things the child should know around a smaller number of subjects, 
we shall enable him to develop those strong qualities of attention, 
concentration, application. 

The warning and exhortation is that in this day of complexity, mul- 
tiplicity, dissipation, distraction, restlessness, we must have in the schools 
such things as will tend to quiet, repose, fixity of purpose, unity of 
action, definiteness of results. To this large work and this important 
mission the teachers of Maine have dedicated themselves by assuming 
the position of instructors. 

This argument is not a plea for less work, but for more work. Our 
schools must rid themselves of confused details, and so arrange subjects 
and topics of study that children can master some of the branches 
studied. 

The Course of Study prepared for the Elementary Schools of the 
State is written upon the plan outlined in the foregoing pages. In this 
document will be found not only the subjects to be studied, the order in 
which they are to be taken, the topics which are to receive special 
emphasis, but also suggestions as to methods and devices to be used in 
teaching the same. 



LOCAL INTEREST IN THE LOCAL SCHOOL. 

The system under which the old-time schools were managed was 
both a recognition of the value of local interest in the local school, 
and an attempt to give that interest efficiency of action by the imposi- 
tion of local responsibilities and the granting of local powers. School 
sites were selected by local action. Schoolhouses were built and kept in 
repair at local expense. School terms began when the majority of 
local opinion, expressed through the action of the district meeting, 
decided that they should begin. Power to eke out the school funds 
by voluntary assumption of the expense of fuel and of board of teachers, 
was conferred by the system. Indirectly by the choice of some person 
as district agent, local preference for the employment of any particular 
teacher could be given effect. Theoretically the exercise of these func- 
tions and powers was expected to make effective a strong local interest 
in the schools ; practically the manner in which they were exercised, 
measured the intensity of that interest. 

In the earlier days of the system, when it was in harmony with 
prevailing social conditions, it was effective in promoting local interest 
and so directing its exercise as to give greater efficiency to the schools. 
Then the railroad, the telegraph and the daily paper had not brought 
rural life and thought into close touch and sympathy with the larger 
life and thought of the world; local happenings, local affairs, local inter- 
ests, were then chief subjects of attention; the local school had a much 
larger place in local interest than it came to have later or has to-day. 
Those were the days, also, of large families, and the children in any 
dozen average homes were enough to make a large school. In conse- 
quence schools multiplied. New school districts were organized as 
new neighborhoods were settled or were carved out of old ones a> 
neighborhoods became more populous. All these conditions combined 
to give this system an efficiency as an agency through which local 
interest could act upon the school for good, which it lost later when these 
ceased to exist. If the school site selected was often lacking in fitness 
as judged by present standards, this lack was due to something other 
than want of paternal appreciation of and desire for good schools. If 
the schoolhouse was rough and rude without, had little fineness of finish 
within, and had hardly other furnishings than the rudest of benches 
for the children, it was in keeping with the average of the houses 
among which it was located. If the master selected to teach the winter 
term, and the mistress to teach the summer term, were ill equipped 
for their work, if their knowledge was limited, and their methods of 
teaching and discipline were crude and rough, yel working in unison 
with the forces of home life, the schools taught by these teachers 
trained their pupils to work and think and know up to the measure 
of the demands made upon them. And if the home failed to touch 
the school by frequent parental visitation, it did touch it effectively for 



i5 

gocd in ether ways. The necessity of having the teacher "board round" 
in order to lengthen the school term, brought the school into the homes 
and carried something from the homes into the school in such ways 
as nelped both. The custom of requiring the older boys to take their 
turns in preparing the day's fuel and building the tires in the winter 
terms, and in like manner requiring the older girls to keep the 
schoolroom swept, had a force and value in maintaining the interest 
of parent and pupil in the school, and an educational value, as well, in 
developing a sense of responsibility that fully compensated for many 
of the disadvantages belonging to it. Moreover, the old-time teacher 
was expected to take a prominent part in the local social life. If he did 
not "board round/' he was expected to visit the families in the district, 
and to participate in such social events as occurred. He thus had 
opportunity to come into close and sympathetic contact with the par- 
ents of his pupils, to feel the stimulus of their interest in them and 
their school life, and to get therefrom added interest in his work. If 
he was a student of high aims and aspirations, working his way 
through college to larger power and knowledge, he frequently found 
opportunity in his intercourse with parents to do his best work for some 
of his pupils. Many a boy in the old-time school got his initial impulse 
to a better preparation for life than the local school could furnish from 
the sympathetic encouragement of such a teacher, and had the way to the 
academy and the college opened to him through the teacher's influence 
with his parents. 

The school of to-day in the scope and character of the workit has to 
do. and in the ways in which it must be managed and taught, differs 
widely from the old-time school. Changes in social conditions and 
customs, in the distribution of population, and in the diffusion of 
wealth, which have taken place within the last half century, have been 
such that the powers and functions which local interest could be trusted 
to exercise can no longer be thus depended upon. Some of the things to 
be done for the schools, such as the selection of school sites and the 
-building of schoolhouses can be better done now in other than the old- 
time ways. Some of the things which the schools under changed con- 
ditions imperatively needed and still need to have done for them, 
could not be done while local interest, acting through former methods 
had power to hinder their doing. Such was and is the suspension or 
abolition of schools too small to be profitably taught or supported. 
And so this system having ceased to be useful in the management of 
the schools, and having become in some respects a hindrance to their 
highest efficiency, has passed away. Local interest in the local school, 
with the abolition of that system, ceased to possess any agency through 
which it might make itself effectively felt. 

But before these changes were made, local interest in the local school 
had suffered a serious deterioration with the coming of changed con- 
ditions in social customs and subjects of interest. The daily mail 
reaching most of the rural neighborhoods and bringing the daily news- 
paper, facilities for travel and wider intercourse ; the multiplication and 
cheapening of books and periodicals, the inauguration and extension 



i6 

of social organizations, such as societies for the promotion of temper- 
ance, the grange — these and kindred agencies had brought so many other 
subjects of thought and interest to the fore, that interest in the local 
school had lost much of its helpful quality. 

But are there not some vital and pressing needs of the schools of 
to-day, which cannot be met without the systematic, co-operative action of 
parents, teachers and pupils ? And is there not a bond of duty both 
parental and civic, which should hold every man and vwoman whose 
children are in the schools, or who desires the good of society and the 
State, to earnest, intelligent, active efforts io improve the schools? 
\\ nen the relation of the school to the parents, and the larger if not 
more vital relation to the State are carefully and intelligently consid- 
ered, these questions admit of no other than an affirmative answer. 

For, primarily, the responsibility for the preparation of the child 
for right living — his education — inheres in the parent. That responsi- 
bility carries with it the duty of superintending and compelling the exer- 
cise of the child's activities in getting his education, and the right to 
determine the measure and quality of that education. When under 
social and civic conditions like ours, the State, because of its paramount 
interest in the right education of its citizens, assumes the educational 
obligations of the parent and claims the right to perform his duties, 
it does not do this absolutely. While it requires the parent to send 
his child to the public school, it at the same time gives him the reserved 
right of educating the child elsewhere, and thus recognizes his primary 
right to educate. In like manner the parent's primary right and duty 
is recognized in the legal dictum fixing the status of the teacher as 
regards his control of his pupils, as that of one standing in loco parentis. 
Thus recognizing the primary rights of the parent, it in equity claims 
the active co-operation of the parent in all that makes for the child's 
right education. Moreover, the parent is a citizen, under responsibility 
for the performance of certain civic duties. The public school is one of 
the most important of civic institutions and it is one of the most 
important of civic duties to see that it is made most efficient for the 
civic ends for which it is established. Every citizen who fails to exert 
his influence in favor of all things making for the good of the scl 
fails in the performance of one of the highest of his civic duties. 

Parental interest can be made efficient for good under the present 
methods of management in quite as important and effective waj - 
under the old-time methods. It may make itself felt in the home, sur- 
rounding the child with an atmosphere charged with interest in his 
school work. What he has done well during the day may be noticed 
and commended; what he has done ill or failed to d<> may be censured 
if censure be needed. He should be made to feel constantly the stimu- 
lus of parental pleasure in his well doing, parental sympathy and encour- 
agement in his striving to do well, and parental disappointment and 
pain in his ill doing. The child who feels himself surrounded at home 
with such an atmosphere of interest in his school life and work will 
rarely fail to put the best in him into his work. 



i7 

The teacher needs to feel the encouragement in doing her best work 
which may be found in a vigorous and rightly directed local interest in 
her school. That she may feel this stimulus, parent and teacher must 
somehow come into sympathetic contact. The wise teacher will seek such 
contact by visiting her pupils in their homes if other equally effective 
means of influence are not provided. She will more than welcome it in 
paternal visitation of her school. The schools of to-day, if properly 
housed and taught, cannot fail to delight the visitor and make him 
wish he were a child again. The bright, pleasant schoolroom with 
delicately tinted and pictured walls, adorned with the greenness and 
color of plants and flowers, and appealing in finishing and furnishing 
to that appreciation of the fit and beautiful which is in all of us, cannot 
fail to give pleasure. The variety in instruction, both in subjects 
taught and methods of teaching, cannot fail to claim the visitor's 
pleased attention. The bright, happy, eagerness of the children in their 
class work, responsive to the earnest and skillful methods and the 
sympathetic personality of the teacher, cannot fail to delight the visitor. 
The manifestation of this pleasure will stimulate pupils and teachers to 
more faithful endeavors. 

Too few of our rural schools in surroundings, housing and furnishing 
are up to the standard to which they must be brought if they are to do 
their best service. School grounds need to be made attractive with the 
smooth greenness of lawn spaces, with trees and shrubbery and plots of 
flowering plants, and with clean, neat walks from roadway to school- 
house, and from schoolhouse to outbuildings. The schoolroom needs 
to be made bright, cheerful, attractive in finishing and furnishing. Its 
windows should be fitted with shades of soft color tempering the light ; 
its walls tinted in delicate and harmonious shades blending with those 
of wainscoting and ceiling ; pictures should adorn the walls, and stat- 
uettes, busts and other objects of art should be tastefully arranged 
about the room ; flowering plants should contribute to its cheerfulness 
and render silent service in educating the children to a love of the 
beautiful ; suitable cases filled with books for daily reference or general 
reading, should be in the room, readily accessible by teacher and pupils ; 
and beside desks of the best form for pupils, and appropriate appliances 
for the teachers, it should be furnished with comfortable chairs and 
settees for the accommodation of visitors. In making school grounds 
and schoolrooms thus attractive, interest in the school can find large 
opportunities for manifesting itself. Some of the work required can be 
done by pupils and teachers working together. Some of it, such as bring- 
ing the school grounds into proper condition, must be done by parents 
and citizens. Some of it will require the full force of local sentiment 
and interest acting in unison upon school authorities, or upon the muni- 
cipality. All this must be done intelligently, systematically and in 
accordance with well considered plans. 

There is needed, then, some fitly organized agency to arouse local 
interest in the local school, to unify it into an effective force for good, 
and to direct its exercise. This agency must be so organized as to 



i8 

bring into harmonious action all the elements of local interest in the 
school, as represented in citizen, parent, teacher and pupil. It must 
have such intimate relation to and connection with 'he local school 
that its needs and work shall be the source and centre of all its action. 
It should have such inter-relations with kindred agencies connected 
with every other school in town, that their combined action may effect 
the common needs of all within the general sphere of its influence. And, 
finally, in some way it should have intimate connection with one great, 
central agency, whose sphere of action should be State wide, and whose 
purpose should be to crystallize all the forces of local interest into one 
great central force, acting upon all local agencies and reacted upon 
by all of them. 

An attempt to inaugurate such a -movement has been made by this 
Department, and the outlines of the plan have been formulated and 
brought to the attention of school officers and teachers through the 
distribution of a circular entitled the School Improvement Leagues of 
Maine. (This document will be sent free of charge to persons applying 
for the same.) 

The plan outlined in this pamphlet would seem to meet all the con- 
ditions which have been stated as essentials to an agency which seeks to 
promote a local interest in the improvement of the school. The success 
with which the plan is already meeting is most encouraging. Teachers, 
pupils and parents are giving evidence of their interest, by calls for the 
certificates of membership, and for the badge button of the League, 
which every member is entitled to receive free of expense. The number 
of such calls is already larger than was expected, and would seem to 
demonstrate that the plan is practicable, and to give promise of its 
complete success. If the hope in which it was formulated shall not prove 
vain, if in every school the Leagues contemplated in the plan shall 
be organized, and enter upon the work set for them, one can scarcely 
conceive the magnitude and value of the results which may accrue. It 
requires no great stretch of the imagination to anticipate some of 
those benefits. As primary and direct results, school grounds will be 
made objects of pride. Old schoolhouses will be renovated and brought 
into keeping with their improved surroundings, or will yield place to 
new ones of more modern and pleasing architecture. Schoolrooms, in 
finishing and furnishing, will become ministers to love OI the beautiful in 
art, and educators in refinement of thought, feeling and action. The 
schools themselves will get new efficiency in their higher functions of 
character building, as through the influence of these Leagues they 
build into character higher literary and art ideals; and their ordinary 
work will be done with greater pleasure and profit to both teacher and 
pupils because of their better environment. But valuable as these direct 
results will be, perhaps more valuable will prove the League's indirect 
effects upon parents, teachers and pupils, ■ and upon the home and 
social life of neighborhoods and communities. 

Parental and popular interest in educational ends, means and methods, 
will be made more intelligent, more active, and have greater power 



19 

for good locally and generally. The interest the school children will 
take in the work of their Leagues can not fail to manifest itself in their 
homes, and will awaken responsive interest in their parents. Public 
meetings of the Leagues in the forms of entertainments and exhibitions 
given to raise funds for carrying forward the various lines of work set 
for them to do — to pay for improvements of grounds or buildings, or to 
purchase books, pictures and art decorations for the schoolroom — will 
make strong appeal to the interest and encouragement of parents and 
friends of the children of the League. Local help will be needed and 
solicited to aid in the doing of some of the work of the League. In 
matters in which the action of the school authorities or the town is 
to be involved, parental and local influence will be invoked. This system 
of Leagues, wherever set resolutely in operation, must act upon local 
interest in the local school, thus training the parent to broader, more 
intelligent and more liberal views of educational needs and educational 
values. 

Not less valuable will be their influence upon teachers. As presiding 
heads of local Leagues, it will be for them to direct the League's opera- 
tions. To do this successfully will require thought, study and reading 
along lines new to many, and hence promotive of larger intellectual and 
professional growth. The many new ways in which they will be brought 
into close relations with the parents of their pupils, will serve to give 
them increased importance in public estimation, and larger influence 
within these spheres ; will bring them and their work under more intelli- 
gent and kindly consideration; will beget a larger parental confidence 
in them and will in all these ways enhance their power for educational 
and social service. And the new and closer relations into which their 
position and duties in the League will bring them and their pupils, 
must give them a stronger hold upon their respect, confidence and good 
will. This will give them larger power of control over them both in 
and out of school. 

But the ultimate purpose of all agencies acting upon the schools, 
is the largest good of the children in them. For this reason they are 
given prominence in the membership and work of the league. For 
this reason much of the League work is made to hold close relation 
to the regular work of the school. And for this same reason many 
of the means to be employed in helping the League to needed funds 
should be distinctly educational in character. Besides the benefits 
which these Leagues will bring to the children through the improve- 
ments they are to work in the school environment, they will exert a 
direct and valuable educational force upon the children. That force 
will be exerted along other than the ordinary lines of school work. 
In the study demanded by preparation for regular and special League 
exercises, the children will get a knowledge of history, men, literature 
and art, which the school in its regular routine would find it difficult to 
give. In their participation in the formal proceedings of the League 
they will require a knowledge of and practice in the methods of proced- 
ure common to all deliberative bodies, that may stand them in good 



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020 975 039 9 



stead in after life. As they come to take active part in the formal 
discussions which will necessarily arise in deciding kinds and methods 
of work to be undertaken, they will gain self-command and acquire 
that power to think and express thought in consecutive and orderly 
way, wnich is among the most valuable of acquirements. They will also 
get that training to courteous and orderly behavior in public assem- 
blies, and that habit of paying due respect to the opinions of others, 
the possession of wnich distinguishes the gentleman from the boor. 
Indeed, if the Leagues had no other than this direct and positive educa- 
tional function, tney would do for the children a very important and 
much needed work. 

Upon the home and social life of neighborhoods these Leagues will 
have no small influence for good, and the good wrought by them in 
this direction will be a constantly increasing quantity. As the local 
League works out its mission of bringing about the time when "the 
teacher, children and parents shall have such an interest in the school 
as will make it the literary and art centre of the community." it can 
hardly fail to affect the home in ways calculated to elevate, refine and 
make sweeter its daily life. Something of that which the children will 
get from it the home must needs get. Something of that which it will 
do for the school in improving the environment of yard and room, 
citizens will be led to do for the home environment. Something of the 
literary and art loving spirit which it is to inspire in the children mil 
get into the homes and manifest itself there. And when the children 
shall have left tne school and snail come to make homes for them- 
selves, every such home may be confidently expected to exert an influ- 
ence for elevating, refining, making pure and sweet and healthful the 
social life of the community of which it forms a part. 

The educational ends herein proposed may fail to commend them 
selves to the few who believe that the power to get bread and butter 
and dollars is the sole preparation for life; but it is believed that the 
broad-minded and thoughtful will recognize them as valuable if 
vital. The feasibility of the agencies and metlv be 

doubted by some, and yet the principle governing their action is univer- 
sally recognized and applied ; nor is there anything in the ap: 
this principle which has not been proved practicable. The 
results as herein imperfectly outlined may s< 
yet few will deny that they are desirable. To those who ha 
educational and social problems with reference t<> th< !uca- 

tional and social methods, means and values, these anticipated results 
will not seem the products of a too optimistic and vivid imagination. 
It is more than hoped, therefore, it is confidently expected, that the 
intelligent local interest in the local school, whether of citizen, parent, 
teacher or pupil, will everywhere find effective manifestation in the 
rapid organization and efficient management uent 

Leagues of Maine. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRES! 

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020 975 039 9 



